The Parent Agency

by David Baddiel

Next to the tent was an old double-decker bus, exactly like the ones from Barry’s world (well, exactly like the ones that used to be in Barry’s world in the old days and that he still sometimes saw on TV in old films set in London). The PCs weren’t all that keen on trudging across the muddy field to get to the tent and not sure what to do when they got there.

  “Do we knock?” said PC 890.

  “Knock on what?” said PC 891.

  PC 890 looked at the tent doubtfully. There was a zip holding the canvas together. “The… door…”

  PC 891 shrugged, made a fist and had a go. But his hand just folded into the canvas with a tiny shushing sound.

  “Hmm. What do you suggest?” said 891, withdrawing his hand.

  “We could call them,” said 890.

  “Call them what?”

  “No, I mean… Mr Cool?! Mrs Cool?!” PC 890 shouted. “Are you in there?”

  There was a shuffling inside the tent. Then a man’s voice said: “Do you, like, have a search warrant?”

  PCs 891 and 890 looked at each other and at Barry, confused.

  “Um… no… We’re from the Parent Agency…”

  “Oh! Yeah! Cool!”

  The zip came down, sticking a couple of times as it went. Out of the tent came a thin man with a large shock of curly brown hair and an equally curly big beard, wearing pyjamas.

  “Sorry to wake you, sir,” said PC 890. He checked his watch as he said this: it was half past two in the afternoon.

  “Hey, no worries, man. So which one of you is, like, Barry?”

  “Er… me…” said Barry, putting his hand up.

  “Cool,” said the man. “I’m Elliott.”

  As he said this, a woman pulled the zip further down and came out of the tent. She was quite a large lady in a flowery dress. “Hi. I’m Mama Cool,” she said. Then she looked at PCs 890 and 891 and said: “Do you work for The Boy?”

  She had an accent a little like Barry had heard back in his own world, on a holiday his family once went on, to Cornwall. They had stayed at a Bed & Breakfast in a place called Coverack where the owner, also quite a large lady, was very proud of how strong her tea was. “You could stand your spoon up in this, my lovers!” she would say as she put down the cups for Barry’s mum and dad, every breakfast.

  “I’m sorry?” said PC 890.

  “Well,” said PC 891, “we work for a boy.”

  “Hmm, I’d normally give you a much harder time,” she said. “But I won’t today because you’ve brought us… our son!!!”

  She opened her arms and gave Barry a hug. She smelt of mud and horse poo. But in sort of a nice way.

  “OK, PCs,” she said, still holding him, “be off with you. Because, once we start parenting Barry, we don’t want you and your rule books around no more!!”

  “OK,” said PC 890.

  “OK,” said PC 891. “Mind how you go!”

  And they left, waving politely.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Barry and Elliott and Mama Cool went inside the tent, where it was much nicer than Barry was expecting. There were lots of candles in glass lamps and loads of cushions, and a really wide bed made out of furry blankets, and a big shaggy dog who jumped up and licked Barry’s face as soon as he came in.

  “This is, like, Neil,” said Elliott.

  “Oh!” said Barry. “That’s why it says Neil on the outside of the tent.”

  “No, that’s the name of the shop we got it from. Neil’s Tents.”

  “Oh,” said Barry.

  “So, Barry,” said Elliott. “Welcome, man. To our, like, world?”

  “Yes!” said Mama Cool. “And, in our world, anything you want to say or do: just say it or do it!”

  “Yeah, that’s how we, like, roll?”

  “OK…” said Barry. There was a short pause when no one quite seemed to know how to react to this statement. Barry smiled awkwardly at his potential parents; they smiled back. Then he said: “Bum.”

  Elliott Cool frowned. “Sorry?”

  “Bum.” Barry said it a bit louder the second time.

  “Like, where?”

  “No. You said I could say anything… so… BUM!!!”

  “Oh, I get it!” said Mama Cool. “Yes! Bum!!”

  “Right… right…” said Elliott. “Bum, yeah. Poo. Like, smell? Cool…”

  “Bum!” said Barry, again. “Bum bum bum bum bum bum! Poo wee fart bum willie poo bum. Sick and bogey and diarrhoea!”

  Elliott and Mama Cool clapped and laughed.

  “Awesome, Barry…” said Elliott Cool. “What about, like, plop?”

  “Or bloody?” said Mama Cool.

  “Really?” said Barry. “I can say bloody?”

  Elliott Cool smiled at his wife. She smiled back.

  “As we said, Barry,” said Mama Cool, “you can say or do whatever you like…”

  Barry took a deep breath. “Bloody plop-plop!” he said.

  Elliott and Mama Cool laughed and clapped again. Barry laughed and clapped too, even though the idea of bloody plop-plop made him feel a bit sick.

  “Would you like something to eat, my lover?” said Mama Cool after Barry had finally run out of all the swear words he knew.

  “Yes, please,” he said. The swearing had become quite tiring by the end and he needed something to get his energy back.

  They went outside again and round the back of the tent where a fire was burning, with an enormous stainless-steel pot on it. Mama Cool took the top off the pot and looked in.

  “Mmmm. Mung Bean Muck-Muck…” she said. She produced a wooden bowl and a ladle and dug into the pan. Two seconds later, Barry was staring at a meal of what looked like grimy yellow porridge.

  Elliott and Mama Cool sat cross-legged on the floor with their bowls of Mung Bean Muck-Muck. They tucked in.

  “Hmm, Mama,” said Elliott, “this is, like, the best Muck-Muck ever?”

  “Thanking you, husband-o’-mine. Hey, Barry, you’re not eating…”

  “Yes… I…” Barry dug his spoon in. He raised the Muck-Muck to his lips. He put it in his mouth. It tasted like a melted brick.

  He felt he should do his best to eat it. Otherwise, he thought, he’d seem rude. But then Barry remembered something about these parents. About what they’d just said.

  “I don’t want it,” he said.

  Elliott and Mama Cool looked up from their bowls.

  “Sorry, Barry, man, couldn’t quite understand you,” said Elliott. “It sounded like you said mmmi mdon mwan bbbliiit?”

  Barry chewed as best he could, for about ten seconds, then shut his eyes and, forcing his throat open, gulped down the spoonful of Muck-Muck. Mouth now clear, he said: “I don’t want the Mung Bean Muck-Muck. It’s disgusting. Can I have sweets instead, please?”

  Elliott’s spoon stopped halfway towards his mouth, and Mama Cool looked a tiny bit hurt, but, after a moment’s pause, Elliott said: “Yeah, man, whatever. Let’s get in the, like, bus?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  They drove to the nearest village in the double-decker bus. Barry sat up on the top deck, near the front, enjoying the view. The village itself looked familiar. And it was. A big sign on the main road in said Bottomley Bottom. But, before they got to the gates for Bottomley Hall, the bus turned off towards a high street where there was a shop called Bottom Sweets.

  It was an old-fashioned sweet shop, like the ones in Barry’s world which pretended to be old-fashioned sweet shops. A tinkling bell rang when he and Elliott and Mama Cool went in. Behind the counter were hundreds of high jars of old-looking sweets, pink and green and yellow, and frosted with sugary powders. It smelt of fruit; or at least of all the flavours of fruit that are impersonated by chemicals in sweets.

  A man stood behind the counter in a white coat, with the tips of a series of pens visible in his top pocket. He looked a little like Peevish/Jonty/Big Col, only this time he was bald and wore glasses.

  “Hello, like, Mr Muddle?” said Elliott.

  “Hello, Elliott! H
ello, Mrs Cool!” said Mr Muddle, nodding at each of them in turn and smiling. “What can I do for you today?”

  They gestured towards Barry, who was standing in between them.

  “This young guy would like some, y’know… sweets?” said Elliott.

  “Oh!” said Mr Muddle. “Well, that’s what we specialise in here at Bottom Sweets!”

  Continuing to smile, he lifted his arm. A little stiffly, he swung it behind him, in what Barry realised was a grand gesture, towards Bottom Sweets’ collection of jars.

  “What would you like, young sir?” he said. “Sherbet Bing-Bongs? Pear Mists? Strawberry Slivers? Choccy Nits? Salt Henrys? Bitey Quarters? Nutty Drops? Fizzy Pearls? Sugar Sugars?”

  “Er… do you have any sour sweets?” said Barry.

  Mr Muddle’s face broke into an even bigger smile. “Aha! A connoisseur of the taste contradiction, are we? A delighter in the mouth dichotomy? A savourer of flavour danger?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You like sour sweets.”

  “Yes.”

  “Right. Well, we stock all the usual – Toxic Death, Sour Bads, Mouth Pursers, etc., etc. But…” He produced from his pocket a large gold key. “…I suspect that with a sourerer of your level, we need to go… sourer. Eh? We need to turn the sour dial up… to 13!”

  “Yes, please!” said Barry.

  Mr Muddle smiled even wider and bent down under the counter.

  They could hear the sound of a key going into a lock. It was very clanky. Then what sounded like a rusty metal door being opened slowly and creakily. As if Mr Muddle was opening the door to a haunted house rather than a sweet container.

  “Er…” said Mama Cool. “These sweets… will they be…?”

  “Yes?” said Barry.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Do what you want!”

  Mr Muddle’s face appeared above the counter again, his grin now looking quite mad. He held in his hand a plastic tube. The tube was covered in skulls and radioactive signs. He turned it round, to display what it was called, at the same time saying the name out loud:

  “A-BOMBS!” he said in a deep, frightening voice. “Where the A stands for… Acid!!”

  “Great!” said Barry, taking the tube.

  “Beware!” said Mr Muddle, still in the same voice. “Beware the sour sensation, beyond anything ever conceived before, more power—”

  “These’ll be fine!” said Barry. And he opened the tube and popped one into his mouth.

  Now, in his world, Barry thought of himself as something of a sour-sweet champion. He prided himself, when Lukas and Taj were around, on eating even the sourest of sweets and not reacting; on looking, in fact, as if nothing at all was going on behind his lips.

  For the first five seconds of the A-Bomb, it was all business as usual. Mr Muddle and Elliott and Mama Cool looked on, clearly concerned. Mr Muddle said: “Um… I was going to suggest you just took a little lick to begin with…” but Barry kept sucking on the sweet while doing a “no problem” shrug, like he did at home.

  And then his mouth exploded.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It was actually like someone had dropped a real atom bomb on Barry’s tongue. Well, it wasn’t actually like that as that would have meant that his mouth would have actually exploded, along with his head, and Bottom Sweets, and most of Bottomley Bottom; but it felt really, really bad. Like the sweet was made of lemon, sugar AND THE CORE OF A SUPERNOVA.

  Barry opened his mouth and silently screamed.

  “Oh my God!” said Elliott Cool.

  “Mouth emergency!” said Mr Muddle. “Mouth emergency!”

  “What should we do?!” said Mama Cool.

  Barry continued to move his face from side to side with his mouth open and his eyes wide with horror, like a baby who’s accidentally eaten a chilli.

  “OK,” said Mr Muddle. He looked him straight in the eyes. “Barry. Lie down.”

  Barry did as he was told. He lay down in the middle of Bottom Sweets. His mouth was still open.

  “Mr and Mrs Cool? Could you form a line to the sweets behind the counter?”

  Barry heard some shuffling. His mouth was still open.

  “Right. I’m going to shout out the name of a particular cocktail of sweets that I think, mixed together in Barry’s mouth, will counteract the effect of the A-Bomb. It’s a long shot, but it might just work.”

  “Like, OK?” he heard Elliott say.

  “You pass me the jar, Mama C!”

  “Right, my lover!” said Mama Cool.

  “Sugar Sugars!”

  Barry heard the sound of something rattling overhead. He looked up. Mr Muddle was standing over him with a jar of bright white cubes.

  “Whatever you do, Barry,” he said, “don’t shut your mouth…” He tipped the jar forward and poured into Barry’s mouth two Sugar Sugars. Barry could just about taste the sweetness underneath the raging sourness.

  “Don’t eat them yet!” said Mr Muddle.

  “Orggghmff…” said Barry.

  “Good boy.”

  Then, one by one, Mr Muddle called for all the other jars.

  “Banana Balls!”

  Two of them went in.

  “Caramel Hi-Kools!”

  Four of them.

  “Nougat Naughties!”

  One of them.

  “Toffee Snakes!”

  Half of one of them. Mr Muddle broke it and ate the other half while dropping the first half into Barry’s mouth like a piece of spaghetti.

  “And finally back to basics: pass me the Sherbet Bing-Bongs!”

  Three of them. Barry had never felt his mouth so full of sweets. He’d never felt his mouth so full of anything.

  “OK, Barry, now sit up…” Barry did as he was told. Elliott and Mama Cool were standing there, looking worried, holding a number of open jars.

  “And… crunch!!!” said Mr Muddle.

  Barry finally managed to shut his mouth, bringing his teeth down on the amazing confectionery mix in there. And Mr Muddle was right: the incredible blend of sweetness overwhelmed the sourness of the A-Bomb, bringing the feeling inside his mouth back to normal. He bit, he chewed, he swallowed.

  “Hmm,” he said, looking up at the relieved faces of Elliott and Mama Cool and Mr Muddle. “Quite nice actually. Can I have another A-Bomb?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  On the bus back, Barry decided to sit in the front with Elliott and Mama Cool. Elliott was driving and Mama Cool was sitting next to him. Barry noticed that they were both looking a little white and tense.

  “So anyway, Barry, your party…” said Mama Cool.

  “Oh yes! What kind of party should I have?”

  “Yes, well, obviously you should do… um…”

  Elliott put a hand on his wife’s knee. “Um. You sure you, like, want to say this?” he said quietly.

  “No, Elliott. We’re committed to this way of life and we shall continue to be so whatever… the cost…”

  “Yeah. Course, Mama. You’re, like, right…?”

  “Barry. As we said at the start, you should always do exactly what you feel like doing. So you should have whatever party you feel like having!!”

  By now, the bus was approaching the field with the Cools’ tent in it. Barry thought for a moment. “OK,” he said.

  “Right! That’s all the cows on the bus! Let’s start the engines!”

  Elliott and Mama Cool looked on from about ten metres away. They were clutching each other’s hands. Elliott was shaking his head. Mama Cool may have been crying. But she was still managing to hold on to a spotty tablecloth knotted on to a stick which Barry had decided would serve well as a chequered flag.

  The James Bond and football parties not having worked that well with the other parents, Barry had decided to just work with whatever was in front of him: to go with the flow – which was something else he had heard Elliott and Mama Cool say.

  So what he’d suggested for a party this time was: Animal Car Wars.

  This
is how you play Animal Car Wars. You fill up whatever vehicle happens to be at hand with whatever animal happens to be at hand. Then you fill up another vehicle with whatever other animal happens to be to hand. Then you race each other, and all forms of banging, knocking and animal-throwing are allowed.

  It had taken a while to fill the bus, and had involved quite a lot of Elliott and Mama Cool falling over while pushing and shoving and getting covered in cowpats, but now all the cows were on. Some of them had their heads poking out of the windows, especially on the top deck. There had been a lot of aggrieved mooing. Plus a bit of aggrieved barking, which was confusing at first, until it became clear that Neil had got on the bus as well and was squashed underneath one particularly bloated udder.

  The other car in the race was the Rolls-Royce limousine from Bottomley Hall. Barry had asked Elliott and Mama Cool to invite Jeremy, Teremy, Meremy, Heremy, Queremy, Smellemy, Sea Anemone and Dave. So they had phoned Bottomley Hall – they knew the number, since it turned out that their tent was pitched on Lord Rader-Wellorff’s land – and Peevish had driven straight over with them.

  Peevish had been less certain about playing Animal Car Wars, but Jeremy, Teremy, Meremy, Heremy, Queremy, Smellemy, Sea Anemone and Dave had all insisted that they weren’t going to bottle out of a challenge, otherwise they didn’t deserve the name Rader-Wellorff.

  Which was why the double-decker bus was now lined up in a starting position beside the Rolls-Royce limousine, the bus filled with cows (and one dog), the limo with sheep. Although cows were the bigger of the two animals, the limo looked more stuffed as it also had to fit Jeremy, Teremy, Meremy, Heremy, Queremy, Smellemy, Sea Anemone and Dave (and Peevish, driving).

  Elliott Cool got into the driver’s seat of the bus, next to Barry.

  “OK,” said Barry. “You work the pedals and I’ll do the steering wheel.”

  “Like, really?” said Elliott.

  “Yes. My feet can’t reach the pedals.”

  “Yes, I can see that. But I mean… really?”

  “Well, it is exactly what I want…” said Barry.

  “Like, OK…?” said Elliott grimly and put his feet on the pedals.